


Thirst for Pleasure

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-01
Updated: 2005-11-01
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How foolish, Marthe thought, to believe Francis gone forever, to hope that Jerott would never have to choose between them-the man he worshipped and the wife he claimed to love. Set during The Ringed Castle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirst for Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pun

 

 

Author's Note: Many thanks to my talented betas, Sue Davis and Ishafel, for their valuable comments and corrections.

* * *

  
_The origin of pain,_ says Buddha, _is the thirst for pleasure;_  
\- The Ringed Castle, p. 479 (US version)

The letter arrived mid-afternoon, and at the sight of that firm, elegant script, instantly recognizable, she felt something twist inside her.

_Damn you, Francis._

Barely recovered from the opium addiction which had almost claimed his life, he'd disappeared into the night three months ago in Turkey, without warning or explanation, leaving her and Jerott to remunerate the monks who'd taken them in and find their way back to France together.

The note he had left for her, composed in the same hand as the letter she now held, had required her not to follow himand to keep Jerott from doing so.

Jerott had reacted with the outrage of a betrayed lover. "I'd have gone with him," he had cried. "Whatever he feels he has to do, I could have helped him! Doesn't the stubborn bloody bastard know what friends are for?"

In the wake of Gabriel, in the wake of Lymond, Jerott was desperately seeking a new star by which to steer his life. He'd turned to her, and through the cold nights on the journey back to France, without Francis's presence looming between them, she had finally allowed herself to accept his advances. He had loved Francis, but Francis was gone. Now _she_ was his _Yilduz,_ his Polaris.

They'd married and settled in Lyons where Marthe had taken up the reins of Gaultier's antique business. She'd never been so content in her life; her days were filled with business of which she was the mistress, free to exercise her full capabilities and reap the full rewards for herself, and her nights spent in the arms of her dark knight, her warrior monk, who'd made her the centre of his universe.

And now Francis was endangering her tenuous, heady hold on happiness by writing her husband. _What did he want?_ If Francis called, she doubted that love for her would keep Jerott from following him.

She was tempted simply to throw the missive into the fire, but realized with a sense of helpless foreboding, that Francis could not be so easily thwarted. If he were determined to contact her husband, he would find a way.

How foolish to think Francis gone forever, to hope that Jerott would never have to choose between them. She remembered Jerott's eyes as they followed Francis, his despair at finding him gone, the way he talked about old times with St. Mary's under Francis's brilliant leadership. She knew which of them he would follow.

Wrapping around her heart the bitter coldness, which she had learned to abandon of late, she slipped the letter into her pocket.

* * *

Jerott's eyes lifted from the page and met her gaze uneasily.

"Well," she snapped, pausing to take a bite of the _bar en cro &ucircte._ "Whose bed is my dear little brother adorning now?"

She'd meant it to be mocking, or perhaps goad him into displaying a flicker of jealousy over Lymond's amorous exploits. Jerott, however, treated it as a genuine inquiry.

"He's in Russia." He was watching her with an intensity he rarely displayed, and she realized he was trying to glean her reactions as well. "With G&uumlzel."

Hearing the name of her old lover upon his lips was shocking. There were things Jerott knew about her, and was able to accept only by denying them, even to himself. That he was watching her face for the same hints of jealousy she had sought in his was the closest he'd ever come to acknowledging her past. She took pains to keep her face expressionless.

"He's recruiting," Jerott continued. "He is inviting the men of St. Mary's to come to Russia. There is..." his eyes slid down the letter as he read Francis's exact words, "a prospect of employment, entertainment, and riches."

"Let me know as soon as possible if you intend to join him," she said coolly, setting down her spoon which was, for some reason, trembling in her hand. "Mario Donati just received a fine shipment of lynx pelts from Lucerne. I'll have some fur-lined boots made up for you."

"Marthe, that won't be necessary " he started, but she cut him off.

"Nonsense, they say in Russia spit freezes before it even "

"Marthe, I'm not going."

"Oh." Her delicate eyebrows rose askance. "How impetuous. Are you not even taking time to think it over? A call from the great Francis Crawford surely shouldn't be cast aside so lightly." Her reserve was slipping and she cursed the bald bitterness of her voice.

"I won't deny I miss it." He coloured. "Soldiering, that is. And I'm sure there are things in your past you miss too, but there comes a time when one has to set aside old dreams and make new ones." The platitudinous words would have irritated her if his tone had not been so painfully earnest. His hand left his wineglass and grasped hers desperately. "Don't be so quick to push me away. I love you."

She knew the expected response, but her voice was frozen. She had taken him to her bed, agreed to marry him, but love was something else entirely. In her hard life, she had never known love, or desired it, but suddenly it was here before her, a tantalizing flame, waiting to be fanned, if she willed it. Never had she attempted such intimacy with another person, not even G&uumlzel, and it terrified her.

"Do you _want_ me to go?" There was hurt in his voice.

"Of course not." Even such a small admission was difficult.

"Good, because _I_ don't want to go."

His hand on hers was warm and pressing, and his dark eyes were burning with sincerity, melting the ice around her heart. _He was not going to accept Francis's offer...because of her._

Without removing her hand from his, she rose from her chair and moved to his lap. In the firelight, his dark hair was shot with flame and his eyes seemed to burn as he watched her with something akin to adulation.

He really loved her, she thought, and the way he was looking at her made her feel as if she could, perhaps, one day, come to love him in return. The idea made her light-headed with both terror and elation.

She knew that Jerott would be wounded, rather than pleased, by a declaration of possible love in futurity, so she abandoned articulation, slipping her free hand around his neck and pulling him to her. Right there, with the meal cooling on the table, and without a thought for the unsuspecting servants, she applied everything she'd learned of the male body in the months since their marriage, and the responses of this male's body in particular, to show him all she felt, but could not convey in words.

The past she would banish; the future was in the Dame's hands. As for the present, Marthe surrendered completely to the pleasure of being held, being loved, and of not, for once in her life, standing alone against the world.

 

 

 


End file.
